The disaster scenario that was in everyone's head is slowly starting to fade away.
Faced with a winter that is currently milder than average and the many efforts of citizens and businesses to reduce their energy consumption, the risk of rotating load shedding is constantly being postponed in France.
Exactly the opposite seems to have happened across the Atlantic,
Bloomberg
reveals .
The United States was hit by a storm at the end of December that drastically dropped temperatures below normal for the season.
An episode that pushed energy demand in the east of the country well beyond production capacity.
Unable to cope, the company Duke Energy Corp was forced to cut off electricity to nearly 500,000 homes and businesses on Christmas Eve to avoid a general blackout.
Read alsoAre we going to run out of gas and electricity?
Follow the evolution of the energy situation in France on a daily basis
The problem arose as the storm that hit North America and killed nearly 60 people rolled into the state of North Carolina.
The increase in demand combined with the freezing of two coal plants and three natural gas plants have pushed consumption to levels well above expectations and production capacities.
The mismatch posed the risk of "
an uncontrolled loss of the system
" that runs from Maine to Oklahoma, said Sam Holeman, Duke's transmission system planning head.
A problem that never comes alone, the initial outage, which was to last between 15 and 30 minutes, as had been announced to customers, was prolonged.
This time it is a difficulty with a software, which prevented the automatic restart.
Read alsoThe United States is slowly emerging from the storm, disruptions remain at airports
Once the light returned, the governor of the State, Roy Cooper, demanded accountability from the company and a report to determine the causes of the difficulties and prevent the phenomenon from happening again.
For its part, Duke recalled that other suppliers have found themselves in similar situations.
This is the case of Tennessee Valley Authority, which was forced to set up rotating load shedding on December 23 and 24 in the face of rising demand.
